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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

quite a contenious city council meeting

Arrived at city council meeting right around 7:00. Approximately 60 people in chambers. Meeting started off like so many before with the mundane task of approving bills and reading minutes and approving minutes of past meetings but soon the excitement would begin. I see about 10 or so people from the Save the Castle group in attendance

A landowner is developing a piece of property for a wholesale/retail type of business which is well within the zoning classification of said property. Some land owners to the south of this property are concerned about the noise and the light issue from that property into their houses. Very legitimate complaint however the landowner has doubled the buffer zone from 20' to 40' to make sure these residences aren't impacted in any way. I applaud the developer for this action has it seems they want to be good neighbors.

Next up is the city with the future spending on the various projects for the next five or so years. Andy Furiday presented the cities case for this spending. Council Burlison decided once again to be the lone ranger and he dared question some of these expenditures. That is when Ralph Manley hit the roof. According to Councilmen Manley the city hires and retains professionals to which draw up these plans and the city council shouldn't question the position of these authorities and he wasn't happy that someone on city council dare question spending over 575 million dollars in the next five or so years on improvements to various city projects.Council lady Collette defended Councilmen Burlison and offered up a resolution to give Councilmen Burlison two weeks to provide a list of items that he deems wasteful. Other council members agreed to this and a voice vote to table was held with the only dissenting vote being Council Manley.Councilman Manley I respect your service to country and community, but please don't tell me I don't have the right to question the expenses of a city that can't control the expense sheets for many a city project. That sir is very unAmerican and I'm quite sure you didn't get 6 purple hearts defending this nation and Europe so you could tell people the freedom of speech doesn't exist.

The fireworks at this point had only just begun.

In the recent past numerous news articles have been written in conjunction with the Pythain Castle issue. The Springfield News Leader also carried a piece from our Assistant City Attorney with a time line to the events which have transpired with this building, although not all of the information in this piece is correct and the records keeping on the cities behalf is lackluster at best. Mayor Carlson hit the roof he was told that three private citizens were in attendance to address the issue of the castle. Of course this wasn't on the agenda, but we the people have a right to redress our elected leaders, get used to it Mayor.The owner of the castle was the first to address the issue and she had a couple of barbs and dingers in there to irk the mayor and the city. You could tell Mayor Carlson was none to happy to listen, but to his credit he never interrupted the speakers. Next up Neva and Bill Schroeder from Marshfield with there remarks and then session was closed for business.Having more insight into this than most I've kept my mind open without forming an opinion, to which this has gotten me slammed from both ends, but now with a little more detail and even more soon to be released this seems to the modus operandi of the zoning department with our fair city.